Leaders to Assess "State of the Planet"

Some of the world's top scientists, diplomats and economists will meet this week to take on the most pressing problems facing people and planet Earth.

The fifth biennial "State of the Planet" conference is scheduled for Thursday and Friday. at Columbia University in New York City. The conference, which expects attendance of more than 2,000 people, is being sponsored by Columbia University's Earth Institute and The Economist magazine.

While registration for the event is now closed, anyone can still sign up to view live Webcasts of all the programs.

Among the topics attendees plan to tackle: how to fight poverty in the fast-growing populations of developing countries, what kinds of energy technologies might help the environment, the possibility of more Darfur-like crises around the world and how to prepare for ongoing melting in the polar regions.

Offering a keynote address on the first day will be Kofi A. Annan, former secretary-general of the United Nations and now president of the Global Humanitarian Forum.

Economist Jeffrey D. Sachs, director of the Earth Institute, is set to offer a special lecture on the second day titled, "The Challenge of Sustainable Development in the Next Administration." Other speakers scheduled to appear include Jan Egeland, former U.N. chief of humanitarian affairs and emergency relief; physicist Alice Dautry; Lee Bollinger, president of Columbia University; and Barbara Thomas Judge, chair of the U.K.'s Atomic Energy Authority.

The conference will also feature a special debate Thursday evening on the subject of whether the U.S. will solve the climate change problem. Taking on the pro side will be David Victor, a professor of law at Stanford Law School; and Vinod Khosla, the founder of Sun Microsystems and Khosla Ventures. Arguing the con side will be Daniel Esty, a professor of environmental law and policy at Yale; and Michael Grubb, chief economist at the U.K.'s Carbon Trust.

Held every two years, the "State of the Planet" conference aims to bring together leading thinkers from around the globe to address the state of the Earth and humanity and to find ways to achieve sustainable development.

Among the challenges this year's conference will focus on: how to help the world's poor when estimates predict the planet will eventually have 9 billion people, 3 billion of which will live in poverty; how to prevent regional conflicts like that in Darfur that are caused by drought and food scarcity; how to provide energy, especially in developing countries, without hurting the environment or worsening climate change; and how to respond to the changes likely to be caused by shrinking sea-ice cover in the Arctic and accelerated melting of Greenland's massive ice sheet.

Past conferences have focused on the possibility of sustainable development (2006), using science to fight global poverty (2004) and the relationship between science and sustainability (2002).